


Hyacinth

by tealmoon



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Underfell, Alternate Universe - Underswap, Baking, Brief Mention of Violence, Dissociation, Domesticity, Fluff and Angst, Food Issues, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-08-14 03:53:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7997617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tealmoon/pseuds/tealmoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even in a brutal kill or be killed world, birthdays are still important. As long as nothing went wrong on a birthday, things would turn out okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Bloom

The first birthday present Sans had ever given Papyrus was the idea of a birthday itself.

Experiments didn’t have birthdays, obviously. The Doctor had recorded every moment of their existence, and the day of their creation was probably included, but back then, his papers had only been another thing to desperately eat before their escape. (Along with the experiment food, every bit of stray junk food they could find, the empty wrappers in the trash that still had a bit of residue, the leaves of the fake plants...) It was likely that they had been created and ‘born’ close together, if not hours or minutes apart, but the exact day had been lost forever. They didn’t know how old they were either, without any way to record the time in the lab. How could you know how much time passed when no one had ever taught you what a day was, or a week, or a year?

Papyrus had become obsessed with birthdays after seeing the concept in a picture book they stole from the library, and Sans humored him, squishing down all the thoughts that birthdays were for real monsters who had a place in the world. Even as a child, Papyrus _wanted_ endlessly, a house and clothing and all the food he saw other people eating, while Sans was content with scraps and shreds.

He chose a spring birthday for Papyrus, inspired by every picture of the Surface in bloom, bright underneath the water damage and age. It didn’t matter that they settled in the stagnant winter of Snowdin, or that flowers in the Underground meant death and loss. His brother deserved the season of renewal and creation. Someday, they would reach the Surface, and Papyrus could see it all for himself.

(When they were adolescents and off the streets, Sans used to steal pages of magazines and encyclopedias out of the library, anything that had photos of spring. He cut out pictures of flowers that only thrived under real sunlight and animals that didn’t have monster equivalents, and Papyrus plastered them over his bedroom walls. They all disappeared a few years later, when Papyrus denounced it as a childish distraction for a mature Guard-to-be, but Sans had watched him carefully take down each piece, careful not rip anything when removing the tape. He hadn’t thrown any of it away, and Sans imagined it was hidden in a box somewhere, safe for him to look at in secret.)

His own birthday was in mid-autumn, in the kind of weather he hoped to experience someday, cold but not snowy, overcast. The region around Ebott rained a lot in autumn, and in certain parts of the Underground, where the barrier was closer, you could hear raindrops falling against it. Everyone else talked about how they wanted to see the Sun, but he secretly wondered if sunlight would be too painful for monsters after a lifetime in the dark. A cloudy day wouldn’t be so bad in comparison. Papyrus thought autumn was boring, but it suited him, and his birthdays were similarly quiet: a movie on the couch, a few beers, no arguments. He didn’t care if he got presents or not, but it was a requirement for Papyrus’s birthday.

He had been visiting the dumps off and on for a few weeks, trying again and again. It was stupid, he knew that. Sans had already found a few acceptable birthday presents— a waterlogged history book, a serving spoon that was a little less bent than their current one, a cracked glass ornament that Papyrus would call useless frippery but would secretly hide away to keep— but they all seemed small, unworthy. He’d rather give Papyrus a single, exceptional birthday present and save the rest for winter. Even if that meant coming back on the day of Papyrus’s birthday, hoping for a last-minute find.

Sans waded through the piles of fallen trash, looking around for anything new that stood out. There were just a few other monsters poking through the mess, and his chances were probably good that there wouldn’t be a fight.

Most of the trash at eye level had been picked clean, and with a sigh, he looked for a sturdy foothold and began to climb the nearest tower of junk. It was too treacherous to teleport, when suddenly landing at the top could knock the whole thing down. He had seen the trash piles collapse before, both by chance and someone purposefully trying to kill off the competition, and if you were lucky, you’d take something heavy to the head and immediately dust before you’d have a chance to drown or be slowly crushed. Sans had seen it all before.

A hint of blue magic kept the pile from shifting too much as he clawed open trash bags and tore at cardboard boxes. His first few discoveries were mostly rotten human food, complete with squirming bugs, and he climbed a few feet up just to get away from the smell. Most reasonable scavengers wore face masks and rubber gloves, but he couldn’t put them on without thinking of the Doctor. Constantly needing to go hyperventilate in the Echo flowers didn’t make for a successful trash-hunting experience.

The next few minutes didn’t yield much: clothing so tattered that few would bother trying to salvage it, mangled toys, piles of useless plastic and cardboard. Sans heaved himself closer to the top, desperately hoping now wouldn’t be the time for another piece of trash to fall and knock him down. It’d be a hilarious way to die, but he was on a mission.

He tore open another box, the old tape disintegrating under his hands. It was full of board games, and he wondered if someone would snatch it up after he left, for their children. There was a pack of cards sitting at the top, and he slipped it into his jacket. He had a deck back home, but it was missing a bunch of the diamonds. Maybe he would finally get a chance to pull 52 Card Pickup on Papyrus.

He shoved around the games, loose Scrabble tiles clicking against his hands, hoping there was something else. Papyrus was a decade too old to really enjoy any of it, so he worked his way to the bottom of the box with dying interest, already wondering what was in the trash bag next to it. He fished out a much smaller container, held it up to the dim light, and froze with disbelief. There was no way the universe had delivered him the perfect birthday present...

Distracted in that moment, his magic flickered out, and the tower wobbled under him. A piece of it below him fell free, landing in the water with a sizable splash and causing another scavenger to cry out in panic. He clung to the remains of a TV, his bones plastered there with blue magic until the pile settled. Shoving the box into his inventory (he could examine it when he was on solid ground), he began to inch his way towards the bottom, shaking and sweating so badly that he gave up on physically climbing after a few minutes and hovered down.

The moment his feet hit the water, Sans side-stepped into a shortcut, knowing it was pushing the limits of his energy after that climb. It brought him to a field of echo flowers a few minutes away from his sentry station. The water there was cleaner than back at the dump, so he waded through the shallows to clean the trash smell out of his shoes.

Sans took out the small box and peered at it. The outside was discolored and worn, but it still proudly declared its contents: 3D puzzle, 250 pieces, fun for all ages! On one side, there was a photo of the final result, a little castle made of clear pieces.

He opened the flaps, careful not to rip anything, and peered inside. There wasn’t any doubt that it had missing pieces. Why else would it be thrown away? But at a glance, there seemed to be enough to build most of it. As he returned to his station, break over, he carefully closed it back up and put it away. Papyrus _would_ like it, right? 250 pieces was pathetic for a jigsaw puzzle, and Papyrus only bothered with 1000 pieces at a minimum, now that he was an adult and a puzzle aficionado, but a 3D puzzle had to be novel enough to make up for that.

Sans sat out the rest of his shift in impatient silence, resisting the urge to keep examining the puzzle, to run his fingers through the pieces or pour them out to count how many were missing. The moment it was over, he spent the last of his day’s teleports to head home in an instant. He quickly changed out of his grubby, reeking clothes and hurried out the door once he was presentable. Papyrus would be done with work soon, and Sans couldn’t keep him waiting.

He crossed Snowdin on foot, passing by Grillby’s without a glance. Everyone there had probably noticed his absence, but the regulars should have been used to it by now. They could survive a day without his immense good looks and sharp wit.

The shopkeeper glared up from her phone as he walked in, and he gave her a jaunty wave before heading into the closest aisle. Sans had written everything down beforehand, and he had done it enough times that he knew where (almost) everything was. A few of the more expensive items surreptitiously made their way into his ribcage, where the padding of his sweater and coat disguised the shape of them. She didn’t notice, from the way she went back to texting, but then again, Sans had stolen from much smarter people when he was much younger. This was nothing, and what would she do if she caught the brother of a Royal Guard stealing, anyway? It was practically a tithe.

She did snarl at him when he opened a few packages to check for mold, but that was standard procedure. Some of the deliveries from the Capital got delayed in Hotland for ages, and the humidity didn’t help matters. He dropped everything on the counter, and a handful of gold got her to shut up in a second, bagging it all without much complaint.

A light snow had begun to fall as he headed out. Would there be a storm? Hopefully Papyrus wasn’t still wandering around the forest, obsessing over his puzzles as if a bit of stray ice or pine needles would irreversibly ruin them. People were already heading inside, thankfully. Though he was an adult now and had a reputation to match, he still worried about people jumping him for food, for gold, even the clothing he wore.

He unlocked their front door, about to call out for Papyrus, hoping he was upstairs. Sans stumbled, nearly tripping over his brother’s boots, those ridiculous red heels, left out on the floor, streaked with dust...

He followed the sound of running water to the kitchen and stood at the threshold, staring at his brother’s back. There was more dust on his clothes, bright against the dark fabric, and no doubt on his hands. He was scrubbing them so aggressively that Sans could hear his bones clattering together, now that he was closer. Or was Papyrus shaking?

How long had he been doing this? Papyrus hadn’t been home when Sans dropped in to change, so he must have returned sometime in the twenty minutes it took Sans to shop.

“Hey, uh, Boss?” Papyrus flinched at his voice, despite how gentle he tried to make it. Still, it was better than not getting a response at all, and he didn’t want to accidentally sneak up on him and get a tibia to the face. He put the groceries down and edged over to his side. The water was steaming, probably the hottest it could go, and even without skin, it must have been painful.

Sans leaned over to turn on the cold water; shutting it off entirely would probably upset him. Papyrus stared at him with empty black sockets, but at least he seemed to recognize Sans enough not to attack.

“Think your hands are clean now, Papyrus. You can stop now. Go change your clothes so you can clean those too, alright?” Trading one type of cleaning for another was an easy way to reboot his brother’s mind, so long as he didn’t get stuck on that task as well, and all the following ones Sans tried to offer him. Those were the rough days.

“I got your food too, so you can start on that when you’re done.” He gestured towards the counter.

That seemed to reach him. The light in his sockets flickered back in, and he reached out to shut off the water. “I should go put this in the washer,” he mumbled, head bowed. After so many years, he still got embarrassed when he acted like this. (Though Sans didn’t have much room to complain, with how shameful he felt after his panic attacks, regardless of whether Papyrus left him alone, comforted him, or went into a rage about how weak he was.)

Sans quietly checked him as he turned to dry his hands. His LOVE was the same, Sans saw with a sense of relief— either that dust hadn’t yielded much EXP or Papyrus hadn’t struck the final blow himself.

His brother shouldn’t have needed to kill on his birthday, of all days.

It took a while for Papyrus to finish upstairs, and a few times Sans wanted to get up and make sure he hadn’t accidentally slipped back into another shutdown from cleaning up the dust on the rest of his body. But he soon heard the washer go on, and the bathroom door opening and closing, no doubt so he could rinse off his armor in the tub. Everything seemed fine, so he settled down to clean off Papyrus’s boots for him, using a damp rag to wipe away the film of dust. He was still working on the left, trying to reach a tiny smear of dust in between the buckles, when Papyrus came down the stairs.

Things seemed to be looking up: Papyrus didn’t look as shell-shocked, now fully clean and wearing casual clothes that Sans had seen less and less of as time went by and Papyrus clung to his Guard uniform. The rest of their night could hopefully proceed as normal.

They had a routine, ever since the first year they had a kitchen of their own. Desserts in the Underground were deceptively dangerous— they could be poisoned or wildly overpriced or full of spiders, if not all three, so Sans would buy ingredients and Papyrus would make his own cake. He used to find it kind of sad, back in the days of gloppy, burnt chocolate cakes, but Papyrus enjoyed it. Just putting on his apron (proclaiming that he was _Bad to the Bone_ in jagged letters) seemed to enact some immense change in him. He had been frantically scrubbing away death barely half an hour ago, but his face was calm now, almost serene as he started to retrieve bowls and measuring cups.

It helped that his cakes had gotten a lot better and more complex as the years passed. Sometimes he still got impatient and frustrated during regular cooking, but not with cakes. Cakes were nonessential; they wouldn’t go hungry if he failed, and he didn’t have to rush to finish. He could take as much time as he needed and his mistakes wouldn’t be punished. Regardless of whether it was perfect or terrible, Sans would eat it and Papyrus would enjoy making it.

Sans sat watching from the kitchen table, as his brother measured and mixed and poured. He usually didn’t read the provided recipes past the ingredients list, so whatever Papyrus was making was a surprise. It had multiple layers, so it was clearly ambitious. He didn’t even pause as it baked, making frosting and doing arcane things with cherries and chocolate. They had dinner already prepared from last night in the fridge, and Sans wondered when there would be a pause so he could make his brother eat.

The cake layers had to cool for a while and he had finished his toppings early, so Papyrus collapsed in the other kitchen chair, looking a little dazed at having to stop. Sans reheated and served their leftover lasagna, giving Papyrus a few minutes to eat before busting out the present and putting it beside his plate. Papyrus peered at the box, the fork falling out of his hand.

He shook out a few pieces into his palm, and his face lit up the way it rarely ever did those days, the grin he used to have as a little kid before his adult fangs came in and it got harder to make him happy. In his excitement, he clearly forgot about finishing his dinner, but Sans let it pass. There would be cake soon, and they could save the rest.

Maybe it would have been better to save the puzzle until after the cake was done. Papyrus kept glancing back at the box as he arranged the cake pieces, slathering it in frosting and covering the top with cherries and bits of chocolate. He cut it in large slices and brought two back to the table, though his hands immediately went back to the puzzle, instead of his fork.

It was an amazing cake, and the cherries made it a little bitter, keeping it from being overwhelmingly sweet. Sans told Papyrus so, his mouth still full of cake, and he didn’t even scold Sans for have deplorable table manners. He had settled into a rhythm of sorting puzzle pieces with one hand while eating with the other, and Sans labeled the present as a clear success.

He put away the rest of the cake and cleaned up, and though it probably wasn’t to Papyrus’s standards, at least he wiped up the obvious spills and the dusting of flour on the floor. He put the remaining ingredients away, and paused at the bottle of cherry liqueur, still half full. The cakes in the past had never had booze in them, and he wondered if Papyrus could someday bake something that could get them smashed. Best to drink it now, since he couldn’t think of any regular food to use the rest for. Sitting back at the table, he took a gulp and shoved the bottle into Papyrus’s hand.

He had already finished the base of the castle and was building one of the walls, still beaming. Papyrus took a sip, wincing at the bitter taste, and passed it back. Sans was content to watch him and drink, listening to the wind against the house. He seemed to be dragging the puzzle out as long as possible, trying to make it last, and Sans couldn’t blame him. Tomorrow things would be back to normal, aside from the leftover cake. Papyrus would be tired and aggressive again, and he certainly wouldn’t smile, not like this.

He wanted the night to never end.

They finished off the bottle between them, and maybe they were both a little tipsy by the time Papyrus finished the puzzle, with only three pieces missing. Maybe that was why Papyrus leaned over in his chair to give him a one-armed hug, and why Sans pressed his face against his brother’s sweater and didn’t say anything.

Papyrus carefully lifted up the puzzle, and Sans followed as he took it up into his room and put it on the shelf above his computer, arranging it carefully. “Happy birthday, bro,” he said. Was it over? It was late, and Papyrus moved to get his pajamas, so it seemed so. He was about to leave, hand on the doorknob, when Papyrus mumbled something.

“What? Speak up.”

Papyrus sighed. “Could you... Could you read to me, tonight?” He was flushed a little bit, looking at the carpet. It was something they had done a lot as children, when Sans had picked up reading faster than him, and sometimes Papyrus asked for it as an adult, when the nightmares wouldn’t stop or work was too stressful. Always in the same ashamed whisper, and never too often.

But it was his birthday, and Sans wasn’t about to refuse. “’Course I will. Any preferences?” He always asked that, but Papyrus never cared if it was nursery rhymes or dense academia, so long as it was in Sans’s voice. He shook his head, still red-faced.

While Papyrus was changing, Sans went into his room, glancing over his bookshelf and wondering what would be a good end to the night. Something that would give him pleasant dreams, and nothing too boring. No textbooks, no novels that they couldn’t finish in a single night. Monster poetry was too depressing, since the majority of it was extended whining about being trapped, but he had a few volumes of human poetry. Humans might have been huge assholes, but at least they wrote endlessly about the sky and the ocean and the stars, all the things monsters couldn’t have. Or were they worse for having written something so amazing and throwing it into the trash?

It didn’t matter. Papyrus was waiting for him, already in bed and fidgeting with the sheets. He climbed onto the foot of the bed, patting the lump of his foot under the blankets. Opening the book, Sans began to read.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone cares, Papyrus made a Black Forest cake. In my mind, that's top tier levels of fancy pastry.


	2. An End to Dormancy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This half has some parts centered around food anxieties that I wasn't sure how to specifically tag for, so tread cautiously if that's upsetting for you.

It was hard to get a grip on the passage of time, living in a new universe. He had left home in autumn and landed halfway into spring, and his body couldn’t catch up for a while. By the time he had adjusted to it, his own birthday had passed by, unnoticed and inconsequential. They had asked why he hadn’t told them, why he had just let the date go by when they would have given him a party, but it just...didn’t seem important.

Not so for Papyrus’s birthday. Sans started getting antsy mid-way through winter. He felt the urge to prepare, to search the trash dump, where monsters didn’t shank each other for a stray bit of metal or torn fabric. Even when he intended to sit with Papyrus on his shift or wander around the Echo Flowers, he kept finding himself back, looking for a present. And why? There was no one to give it to. He could bury something or burn it as an offering, but it felt like a hollow action.

He still had to do _something_ for his brother’s birthday, something more than just his bi-weekly visit. It had to be special.

He had to make a cake.

Sans wasn’t particularly good at cooking, not like Papyrus was. He could reliably heat stuff up, and his hotdogs weren’t terrible, though people wouldn’t pay for them back home, but he had never baked before. The kitchen was his brother’s domain, and cakes were doubly so. But it would be fitting, wouldn’t it? It couldn’t be that hard, as long as he followed the instructions.

Blue had cookbooks on his bookshelf, but he didn’t want either of them to catch him messing with Blue’s stuff. Already they had been giving him odd looks in the past weeks, as he became distracted and kept wandering away—no need to be more suspicious. He copied a cake recipe down from a book in the Librarby instead, not bothering to check the book out. It wasn’t anything particularly fancy, the sort of basic cake that Papyrus had made near the beginning of his baking career.

He found himself waking up earlier than Blue, that morning. It was like his body knew that something was off, expecting Papyrus to be there. He stayed as still as he could, trying not to disturb Blue next to him. He had hoped sleeping by another skeleton would have eased his nerves. Blue was cuddly and warm, he didn’t snore like Pap did, and Sans usually had fewer nightmares and slept better beside him or Pap.

_Usually_. He stayed motionless as Blue got out of bed, assuming he was still passed out. He only exhaled once the shower came on in the next room, hurrying to get up and dress himself. If he got it done first thing, then maybe the anxiety would go away.

He had to go out to buy all the ingredients, and that itself gave him pause. He had more than enough gold, and prices here were lower than back home. He wouldn’t need to steal anything, but it still made him nervous. Shuffling on socked feet, trying not make any noise, he headed down to the kitchen to check the fridge, to see if they had any eggs.

They did, and milk and butter as well. He squinted at the recipe in his fist, wrinkled from his constant unfolding and fidgeting. Why did they constantly have so much food? Hesitantly, he climbed up onto the counter to reach the upper cabinets and check those as well.

They had almost everything he needed for the cake. He still needed to buy frosting, but everything else was already there. In the several months he had been living there, he had never seen either of them bake anything. They had so much food on a whim. Food they didn’t eat, ingredients that went untouched. He should have felt relieved, but it was just _weird_.

He didn’t bother to get breakfast before retrieving his shoes and jacket; it’d waste time. It was early enough that the store wouldn’t be open for another twenty minutes, so he teleported out of the house and into Waterfall. In lieu of an actual present, he wandered around, picking Echo Flowers to leave for Papyrus. He made sure only to uproot ones that repeated the sound of the water, not any with voices. He could add his own message to them later, and put them carefully in his inventory.

The lights in the store were just coming on when he teleported back into town. The shopkeeper beamed at him as he pushed the door open. “First customer of the day! Getting an early start, Red?”

People in this Snowdin actually knew his name, by now. After several months of living there, he probably counted as a resident, not a visitor. People bothered to pay attention to him, enough that he worried his backstory wouldn’t hold and someone would realize he wasn’t actually from Hotland or this universe at all. He mumbled a wordless response and tried to grin up at her, which seemed to be enough. She laughed and headed up to the front counter. “Maybe try some coffee Red, you’re looking a little tired.”

He easily found a can of vanilla frosting and spent several more minutes lingering over a tin of star-shaped rainbow sprinkles. Were they childish? Would Papyrus have liked them? No one sold that sort of thing back home; same with frosting, which Papyrus had always made by hand. The recipe was pretty plain, so maybe they would help? Before he could lose his nerve, he carried both up to the counter.

She raised an eyebrow at him but didn’t ask, probably because he was starting to drip sweat. It was stupid— why did he care about what she thought? He had bought the household groceries a hundred times without incident, so why was this any different?

Even walking as slow as he could, watching the town wake up and start the day, the trip back didn’t take as long as he wanted. Blue was bouncing around the kitchen and making breakfast when Sans walked in. The rustle of the bag seemed extra loud, and he regretted carrying it, rather than putting it silently in his inventory.

“I was wondering where you went! Sit down, this is nearly ready.” He gestured with the pan in his fist, and if it had been anyone else, it probably would have sent the scrambled eggs flying out and onto the floor.

He shook his head, mutely. He wasn’t hungry, or at least he couldn’t feel any hunger past how uncomfortable he was. Blue stared at him, and then at the bag he had a stranglehold on. “Are you feeling alright? I can save some for later, if you want to lie down for a bit.”

What he _wanted_ was for Blue to clear out so he could use the kitchen, but he bit down on the words as Pap stumbled down the stairs, still in the clothing he had probably slept in, boxers and a wrinkled tank top. A few months ago, he would have blushed at the sight, but now it just made him more annoyed and anxious. Neither of them had work that day. Would they hang around the house, or could he get some alone time?

As he huddled on the couch, slowly boiling in the confines of his jacket, his hope withered. They seemed to take forever to eat breakfast, offering him a plate a few more times and looking more and more concerned. Pap eventually drifted upstairs to get dressed, and Blue got out the vacuum. Were they both staying in? Pap settled on the couch beside him as Blue started furiously cleaning the living room. Sans edged into the kitchen. The TV came on, blaring music over the sound of the vacuum, and he flinched, nearly dropping the bag in his hand.

He tried to move quietly as he set out bowls and ingredients, but he could catch them watching when he opened the fridge or turned to check a drawer for measuring cups. Sometimes he helped with cooking meals, but rarely anything on his own. The kitchen belonged to Blue, and he could stop Sans at any point. The thought made his hands shake, leaving a spray of sugar across the counter as he tried to pour it out.

Halfway through mixing the butter and sugar, Blue finally poked his skull in. “What are you making? Do you need some help, Red? I _am_ a master chef, as you know!” He spotted the crumpled recipe Sans had left on the counter, and Sans grabbed it, stuffing it back in his jacket before Blue could look any closer.

Reaching into the fridge, he pulled out the container of eggs, with a quiet sinking feeling. Blue had made scrambled eggs for breakfast—there was still a portion waiting in the fridge for him. _Blue had used most of the eggs._ There was still one left, and he fumbled to check the recipe. He needed two; would one be okay? They were big eggs, so maybe one would be enough. Blue watched, his head tilted, as Sans cracked it in and picked out the fallen bits of shell with his fingers, cursing softly.

“I could teach you how to properly crack eggs too,” Blue offered. “It used to be difficult for me as well, it’s very tricky. You shouldn’t feel bad.”

Maybe if he annoyed Blue enough, he’d go away without much fuss. It was time for his first line of defense. “Nah, I don’t need any pointers. It’s not eggs-actly rocket science over here.”

“Well, actually—wait. Was that a pun?!” It was near-impossible to pout when you didn’t have lips, but somehow Blue pulled it off. “That was awful!”

“Yeah, these _yolks_ are not all they’re _cracked_ up to be, right?” Ugh, they weren’t even good puns, but it was the best he could come up with while still trying to focus on the recipe. It seemed to be working; Blue was getting a weird look on his face, like he was torn between wanting to laugh and yell.

“No need to get all _scrambled_ , Blue.” Normally, if it was Pap making the puns, Blue would have stormed out of the room by now. He was whining and stomping his feet, his face that pretty shade of cyan, but...he didn’t leave.

The kitchen was slowly getting hotter as the oven preheated, and he could feel himself sweating more, in big oozing droplets that soaked his shirt and threatened to drip in the bowl he was adding flour to. A reasonable person would have taken off their heavy jacket, but he needed whatever shields he could find against Blue’s stare. His annoyed look faded into skepticism as Sans spilled baking powder down his front and onto the floor.

“Are you _sure_ you don’t need any assistance? I’d love to lend my brilliance to your...cookies? Cake? Your unspecified dessert journey!”

It didn’t look wet enough when he added the milk, so he dumped in an extra half cup. That would compensate for the missing egg, right? He stared down at his progress. It looked like a horrifying lumpy mess; was it supposed to? A few weak stirs only managed to send more of it onto the counter, rather than turning it into cake batter. It never seemed this messy when his brother did it. “Nah Blue, that’s _sweet_ of you to offer, but I got this,” he managed, trying to mix it with as much vigor as he could manage, which wasn’t much.

That final pun, weak as it was, seemed to do him in, and Blue threw up his hands with an unintelligible snarl. Usually that reaction was hilarious, but it made him more nervous, somehow, enough to give up on stirring. He poured the mess into the baking tin, dripping batter everywhere. With shaking hands, he shoved it into the oven and slammed the door shut.

It’d take a half hour to bake, so he started cleaning up. There was flour and sugar on the counter and floor, drops of batter and egg yolk already drying on the stove-top. He put the leftover ingredients away, and Blue sprung into action beside him, wiping down the stove.

As it baked, the smell drew in Pap, and he leaned against the doorframe. “Cooking something, Red?” Even from that distance, it suddenly felt crowded. He felt himself cringing back as Pap crossed the room, peering at the dirtied bowls still on the counter. “Any chance I could lick the spoon?”

“No!” He snatched the mixing bowl up and shoved it into the sink, turning the water on before Pap had a chance to touch it. He doubted the batter would have tasted good anyway,. They both stared at him as he scrubbed it out, shoulders hunched up to his skull. Blue started sweeping the floor behind him, and Pap...just stood there. For no reason. Watching him.

“Settle down, dude. What’s the occasion?” He gave a wordless grunt in response. In a best case scenario, they would make a big deal out of his brother’s birthday, when he wanted to be left alone. He had gotten used to them occasionally coming with him to Papyrus’s grave, but this was too intimate for them to barge in on. And a worst case scenario...he was trying not to let his mind run wild with all the possibilities of what could happen.

There was only so much cleaning he could distract himself with, especially with Blue doing half of it. Why did baking take so long? He reached over for the oven mitts and wrenched the pan out of the oven the moment thirty minutes was up, wincing at the blast of heat it released. Hyper-aware of them looking over his shoulder, he set it down.

The cake... didn’t look quite right. It wasn’t burnt, which had to count for something, and it didn’t smell too weird, but the middle of it had sunken in. Could he cover it up with enough icing so that it would look normal?

Unsealing the can of frosting, he dug out a spoonful and glopped it onto the center of the cake. Trying to smooth it out only seemed to make the top layer dissolve into crumbs, so he added more until he had used the entire container, covering the sides as best he could. There were bare patches and a fuckton of crumbs, but it wasn’t the worst thing he had ever seen, and fiddling with it more would probably make it fall apart. He started adding sprinkles liberally, and he could admit they were pretty cute, distracting from how uneven the frosting was.

Everything seemed to go fuzzy, after that. He moved to throw the sprinkles can away, after he had emptied it out. He could hear Pap walking closer, and Blue had leaned around him, hand reaching towards the cake. It wasn’t clear what he intended to do. Neatening up the frosting? Putting it into the fridge? He was saying something as well, but it was lost in the static building in his skull.

Whatever it was, Sans registered it as a threat. He snatched up the cake, clutching it close to his ribs and summoning a single bone to smack Blue’s hand away. _“Fuck off!”_

(Even in a panic, he had held himself back. He had dusted monsters over a scrap of food in the past, a single piece of gold, but he didn’t want to hurt Blue. Their universe had really softened him, hadn’t it?)

“Red, what the hell?!” In an instant, Pap was beside them, pulling Blue into his side. His voice sounded so much like Papyrus in that moment, and the way he was looming over Red, his posture straightened, the barest flicker of magic in his eye socket, which could have been red, in the proper lighting... He wanted Pap to hit him, to hug him, to do anything at all, as long as he kept looking and sounding just like that.

Of course, the moment was broken a second later, when he looked down at his brother, frantically checking him for any damage. Blue barely had a scratch on him, and it probably had been more shocking than painful, but Pap was behaving like he was seconds from dusting on the floor. Blue brushed him off, holding his palms up to Sans in surrender.

“I’m sorry I upset you,” Blue said, in a voice he had perfected over the months: quieter, each word spoken at a normal pace, what must have been unbearably slow for the excitable skeleton. The voice Blue had started using for when Sans had panic attacks. “Are you alright?” It might have been calming, if he wasn’t trying to elbow his brother back at the same time.

“Bro—” Blue shushed Pap, but Sans made the mistake of glancing back at him. and all the comforting gestures from Blue couldn’t regain his attention. Months of living with Pap, even fighting him a few times, and he had never seen him this angry, still glaring down at Sans with his jaw frozen in a grin. He wouldn’t attack with Blue in the way, but how long would that last?

He had to flee. Sans stumbled backwards into a shortcut before either of them had a chance to pin down his Soul, already knowing his destination.

He collapsed in front of his brother’s grave, his body so charged with panic that he could barely feel the snow seeping into his shorts and the cake tin burning his hands. Would they follow him? Blue might, but Papyrus would probably try to stop him. And if they did look for him, they wouldn’t expect to go here first, right? The thought calmed him a little, and he tried to breathe, gulping in the cold air.

He put the cake down in front of him. Should he have brought something to set it on? Would it get cold, sitting in the snow? There were a million steps he had missed, and he couldn’t fix them now.

“Hey bro,” he said, patting awkwardly at the tree. “Happy birthday. I didn’t get you a present this year, but...y’know. Maybe next year? I baked your birthday cake instead.” He held it up closer to the tree trunk, as if Papyrus could see it properly then. “I know it’s not up to your standards, but I think it’s okay for a first attempt? I’ll get better at it.” Would he do this every year? Would he someday bake at his brother’s level, just so he could shove a cake at a tree and try not to cry about it?

“It’s not much a party, I know, but lemme just...”

With a crackle of red magic, he let his blasters form, all four of them seeming to squint at the bright snow, expecting a fight and only getting this. He could at least celebrate Papyrus’s birthday with some part of the family, if not the birthday boy himself. They settled in the snow around him, with identical looks of confusion. He patted them each in turn, and although they didn’t have much in the way of expressions, they seemed a little happier.

On a whim, he held the tin out to one of them. Though he doubted that they had any sense of smell, it recoiled a bit, giving him a look that he assumed was annoyance. The blasters couldn’t eat either, so there was no chance of sharing the cake with them. Did they understand what the significance was?

Papyrus’s own blasters were gone, he realized, a heavy feeling starting at his sternum and spreading outward. He had barely even put a thought to them, but they were dead too. What sort of shitty brother was he, to have forgotten about them as well? Did his blasters know half of their number had been wiped out in a moment? Putting the cake back down, he leaned over to the closest blaster, wrapping his arms around it. It made a little confused growl, and the others edged around him, nudging their skulls against him. They deserved more from him.

The months he had spent here had been kind to them as well. Back home, he had never had so much excess magic, but here, he didn’t have to fight or push the limits of his shortcuts. He had magic to spare, and some of that went to slowly healing his blasters. If he had brought them out more often, he probably would have been able to see them recovering over the months: their cracks were less prominent, and two of them were slowly regrowing missing teeth. Those were cosmetic changes that had no impact on their power, but maybe he could stop treating them only as weapons now.

“We’re having a birthday party for our bro,” he told them, hoping they understood, or at least remembered Papyrus. “Try and behave yourselves, alright?”

He didn’t have anything to cut or serve the cake with, not even a fork. Cringing, he dug a pocket knife out of his jacket, using a handful of snow and the edge of his shirt to clean away any residual dust. It wasn’t long enough, and immediately globs of frosting and cake stuck to it as he made his first sloppy cut, but it was all he had.

He divided it into six uneven slices and let the knife drop. He had gone all wrong with it, but there was no way to stop, now. It was so messy—Papyrus would probably be screaming in rage at that point, voice cracking so he wouldn’t sob—

Sans plunged his hand in and pulled out a slice. The bottom half had stuck to the pan and disintegrated, leaving a shower of crumbs on his shorts. Without any sort of ceremony, he shoved it between his teeth.

For a second, he was overwhelmed by too-sweet frosting, and it almost tasted okay, before the rest of the flavor followed suit. The bite was enormous, and he struggled to chew, immediately regretting it. It tasted _soggy_ , though there were unpleasant dry clumps in it. He swallowed just to get it out of his mouth, but it seemed to linger on his teeth, slimy and wrong. Looking up at his brother’s grave, he tried very, very hard not to cry.

It was possibly the shittiest cake that had ever graced any version of the Underground. Papyrus’s biggest baking fuckups had never been this bad, as burnt and wonky as they had been at the start. Someone should give him a plaque for his horrible achievement; it needed to be immortalized in cookbooks as a warning.

But... he had only eaten one slice. One for himself and one for Papyrus, right? It was only proper to have another, in his brother’s stead. At least one, maybe more. Back in his universe, a birthday cake might take them a few days to finish, but this place was different. People here didn’t lock their doors; anyone could just walk in. The human showed up sometimes, and Alphys as well—he trusted the brothers a little, but not them. He had spent months getting used to it, but this was too important to leave up to chance.

If he ate it all now, no one could take it away.

The second piece easily broke apart, and he tried it bit by bit, hoping it would be more tolerable than all at once. Not having to chew much did make it a little better, in the sense that losing a few fingers was better than getting your hand chopped off at the wrist. He picked off the sprinkles so he could chew on them after each swallow of cake, like a chaser. After a while, the taste clung to the inside of his mouth. No amount of swallowing could make it go away.

They didn’t bother walking quietly when they finally approached, and he went silent. Pap’s shuffling steps, not hurried at all, and Blue rushing on ahead, maybe even running. Staring down at the crumbs and icing on his fingers, he didn’t move as Blue knelt at his side, not pausing at the sight of his blasters. What silent conclusion was he making about about the scene: bitchy, awful Red, crying and gorging himself at his brother’s grave, surrounded by weapons? It must have seemed incomprehensible. Slowly, Blue put an arm around him. “Red? Are you...”

He didn’t know what Blue was trying to ask. Seemingly on auto-pilot, his hand moved down to scrape up another piece of cake. He didn’t want it, he wanted to stop and go home (was it _home_ , now?) and crawl back into Blue’s bed, as if he was still allowed to use it, as if he wasn’t an asshole having a tantrum. He wanted to throw it all up, wash the rest off his hands, and go to sleep.

No. He couldn’t waste Papyrus’s cake, as terrible as it was. He couldn’t waste food at all, despite spending months with people who threw stuff away if it looked stale or smelled weird. Shouldn’t he have gotten used to it by now? Shouldn’t he be through with the urge to dig it all out of the trash, the second they had left the room? His body shook, rejecting it, but he opened his mouth and started chewing. Fuck, he still had half the tin left to eat, and a lot of it was crumbling into pieces too small to easily pick up.

The swallow seemed to last forever, and he curled into himself, feeling nausea build up. It was worse with an audience, their confusion and disgust. He could hear himself rattling, and he started to gag, shoving a hand against his teeth to make sure everything went down.

Blue didn’t let him reach for another piece. “Red, what are you doing? Stop, please!” With a crunch of snow, Papyrus knelt at his other side, and he cringed under their combined gaze.

“Let me finish,” Sans panted, trying to pull his hand away. It was getting frosting all over Blue’s glove, and even that sickened him. It was gross. _He_ was gross, getting his mess all over their lives.

“You can... you can save it for later, Red! We can put it in the fridge, and Papy and I won’t take it, I promise.”

“N-no, no, I have to have it now.” Another wave of nausea passed over him, and he doubled up a little, with a whine. Food poisoning? Had he fucked it up that badly?

“Why’s it so important, kid?” Papyrus’s voice was a lot harder and quieter than usual, but it didn’t have the anger of an hour ago. Sans could barely feel his hand against his back, through his thick jacket, but it was there.

He didn’t want to say it, but they already knew so much of him. “It’s my brother’s birthday cake,” he whispered. “I made the cake for him. C-can’t just waste it.”

“But you can finish it tomorrow, I’m sure your brother won’t mind.” Blue reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, starting to dab at the mess on Sans’s hands. He whimpered, lurching back. Even that was a waste, like he needed to lick his fingers to make sure it was all eaten. His blasters shifted closer at his noise, ready for him to command them. Papyrus cursed behind him, and there was a shift in the air as he teleported several times in quick succession. Blue squeaked in surprise as his brother appeared at his side, lifted him up, and moved them a few yards away, ready to retreat even further.

“Red,” Papyrus called out. “Don’t do this shit again, stand down.” He could hear Blue growling and trying to get away from his brother’s grasp, though he didn’t know why Blue would bother returning to his side. The blasters stared at him; where was the threat? What did he want them to do?

Although he didn’t want his blasters to leave (this was their first chance at fresh air in months, and now it was over?) Sans quickly dismissed them. No one needed to get hurt just because he couldn’t control his own magic. Despite his distance, Papyrus’s sigh of relief was clearly audible, and his grip on Blue loosened enough for him to bound back to Sans’s side.

He was silent for a minute. “You’re going to make yourself sick if you force yourself to eat all that. Your brother wouldn’t want you sick on his birthday! Is it really a waste if you’re going to finish it eventually?”

“I have to eat his share for him,” Sans finally said, so quiet that Blue might not have caught it, if Blue’s skull hadn’t been resting against his shoulder. “Half of it’s for me, and half for him, and he’s _fucking dead_ , so I need to eat it for him, and—and—” He hung his head. “This is fucking stupid, isn’t it.”

“Not really.” Sans flinched a little, not expecting Pap’s voice to be so close; he hadn’t heard him walk up. Maybe he had teleported again, while Sans had been too distracted by Blue’s warmth. “Your bro died, you have the right to do whatever weird shit you need to do. Just don’t pick fights with us over it.”

He looked down, at the half of the cake still left there, raw and falling apart. He was growing more dizzy and shivering with each moment. “If...if I bring it back. You guys won’t throw it away?”

“Of course not!”

“And you won’t eat it yourself?” Had it been anything else, he wouldn’t have cared at all, but it was his brother’s.

“Not to be rude or anything, Red, but it’s kind of _crumb-y_ , for a cake.” Blue squawked and slapped Papyrus in the shoulder, though it didn’t stop either of them from snickering.

“Brother! That’s rude! Red put his Soul into that cake—”

“Nah, he’s right. It’s pretty terrible, isn’t it.” He brushed a few crumbs off of his fingers and back into the pan. The frosting and sprinkles, he licked off, the only bits that didn’t seem repulsive.

“Well... Next year,” Blue said, tentatively. “I can help you make it, or we can figure out what went wrong with this one, so you can make a better one yourself. I promise!”

He knew it would be unacceptable to let Blue make Papyrus’s birthday cake, but maybe... maybe a little help would be okay, enough that he could someday do it on his own. His mind wanted to reel away from the thought of years and years without his brother, years of pathetic cakes, but he tried to ground himself with Blue’s hand on his arm.

“N-next year,” he said softly, letting himself lean against Blue a little more. Or...maybe, just a few cupcakes instead, something smaller and more manageable.

“Do you want a little more time with him? You look pretty cold, but if you want to stay longer, that’s okay.”

“Nah, just one more thing,” he said softly. Sans reached into his inventory and pulled out the Echo Flowers. At the movement, the brothers both backed out of range, so the flowers wouldn’t hear them. “Happy birthday bro,” he choked out. “I love you.” The flowers obediently caught the words and began to repeat them softly as he laid them down at the base of the tree.

The snow had numbed his legs, so he struggled to stand up and move away from the tree, having to cling to Blue’s arm until his knees worked properly again. Retrieving the cake tin, he turned to the brothers. “Can we...can we go home, now?”

Maybe it wasn’t a betrayal, but his present to Papyrus: he was safe and taken care of, the one thing Sans’s brother valued over his Guard position, their house, every physical item Sans had given him. He had found a new life and people who would take care of him in Papyrus’s absence, rather than falling down in grief or becoming easy EXP. Surely that would have made Papyrus happy.

Instead of making him stumble all the way through the woods and back to Snowdin, Pap put an arm around his shoulder and took his brother’s hand, teleporting them all back to the house. Blue made him go back outside to brush himself off so he didn’t leave crumbs all over the carpet, but it only took a few seconds before he was back inside, in the warmth.

Under their careful watch, he reverently placed the cake back into the fridge before anything else, even though his shorts were still wet with snow and he felt like he was going to vomit pure sugar for the next few hours. The relief was so heavy that it sent him to the kitchen floor, and he leaned against the fridge. Cold and unyielding, yet not the worst place he had ever taken a nap. He managed a few minutes of dozing before either of them noticed.

“Red?” Papyrus crouched down beside him, skull tilted. “You alright there?” He mumbled and pressed his cheekbone against a low-hanging fridge magnet. “Maybe you’d sleep better on the couch? In dry clothes, too. Imagine that.” When he couldn’t get a coherent word out of Sans, he heaved him up into his arms and carried him into the living room. The sudden movement made him jerk back to lucidity, and he clung to Pap’s hoodie, feeling nauseated.

By the time he was deposited back on the couch, it felt like everything was spinning, and he had to brace himself on the couch arm as he changed out of his shorts and into the dry sweatpants Blue brought down for him. Pap made him a cup of tea, so he had clearly been forgiven. It wasn’t horribly sweetened for once, and he managed a few sips without retching it up.

It wasn’t even noon yet, but he found himself drifting off, exhaustion catching up with him. Had it only been a few hours since he had woken up? It felt like he had been struggling through an entire day. He jerked out of sleep every time one of them walked by or leaned over the couch to Check him, but for the most part, both skeletons stayed upstairs quietly. He felt too shitty for lunch, but he roused himself enough to keep watch over the kitchen as they ate, to make sure the cake went undisturbed.

Dinner was a subdued affair. He still felt awful, so he picked at a single taco while they tried to keep up a conversation. He retreated upstairs to Pap’s room early on, before they had finished. Because he cycled through their beds and the couch these days, Pap’s bed actually had proper, semi-clean sheets now, mostly through Blue’s efforts. There was even a single quilt that had been in a box in the back of his closet, although it was threadbare and had a few cigarette burns. He wrapped it around himself, curling up on his side and clutching a pillow to his ribcage.

Papyrus soon came in, trying to move quietly. He plunked a bucket beside the mattress and laid a hand against Sans’s skull, the only part of him not shrouded in blanket. “Hey kid, you still awake? Brought you something to puke in if you need to, since you’re still feeling gross. Bro would kill us if he had to do laundry again.” The touch turned into a brief caress that stopped too soon for Sans’s liking.

“Thanks Pap,” Sans mumbled, watching as he kicked off his sandals and pulled his hoodie over his head, letting it drop beside Sans’s jacket. It was a tight fit for both of them on the mattress, but Pap didn’t throw an arm over him or settle against his side like he usually did, leaving Sans plenty of space if he had to be sick. He didn’t make Sans share the quilt either, settling for just the sheets.

It was warm, and quiet, and if he didn’t move too much, his body kept the pain and nausea to a minimum. Pap easily drifted off to sleep, and he could hear Blue turning off all the lights, getting ready for bed himself. He should have been knocked out and drooling by now, but he was wide awake.

Inching to the edge of the mattress, he eased up to his feet, going slowly in case his body decided to protest. With the quilt still wrapped around him, he nudged open the door and headed downstairs, taking each stair carefully in the dark. Shoving his feet back into his shoes, he opened the front door and stepped into the snow a mile away.

He had forgotten the last part of Papyrus’s birthday, and it seemed so obvious now. He stepped closer to the tree, leaning against it rather than soaking himself in snow again. Sans couldn’t go to bed without reading his brother to sleep; it didn’t matter that he was dead. Somehow Sans knew it was what he would have wanted. Sans didn’t have a book with him, but that was inconsequential. When they were really little, just starting out at reading, Sans had recited ‘Peekaboo with Fluffy Bunny’ so many times that he had memorized it, and it was still hanging out in the back of his mind, with all the scientific equations and formulas he never used anymore.

The Echo Flowers were still repeating his happy birthday, untouched by any other voices, but he didn’t mind them picking up the story. It took a minute to start, but it soon flowed out of him, although it had been years since Papyrus had last requested the story.

If there was ever a time for Fluffy Bunny, it was now.

It wasn’t a long story, and the cold had barely started to seep past his quilt cocoon as he trailed off into the happy ever after, listening to the flowers repeat it back for a minute.

He would be back tomorrow, with the rest of the cake; there was no way he would let it last for more than a day. Time would not do that monstrosity any favors. Maybe it would take him the whole day to finish it, but he would, one crumb at a time if he had to. But for now, finally both of them could rest.

“Good night, bro.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, I've just been so frustrated with this that I wanted to get it done so I can focus on something else, even if it's not exactly how I hoped it'd turn out.


End file.
